Free tool · 60 seconds

What's an hour of your time actually worth?

You probably tell yourself you'll fix this after the next busy season. Plug in two numbers and find out what doing $15/hour work is actually costing you — every single year.

The math

Round numbers are fine. The result tells you the size of the problem, not the exact dollar.

$
Best guess at the last 12 months.
hrs/wk
Answering phones, fixing the schedule, chasing invoices, doing the books, smoothing over jobs that went sideways — the work the team should be doing.
%
If you don't know, leave it at 12% (a reasonable home-services average).
Your number
Spending 15 hrs/wk on $15/hr work, in a business doing $2M, is costing you:
$ 163,250 / year
Your effective hourly rate as an owner is $115/hr. That means every hour you spend on $15/hr work is a $100/hr hole — and you're digging it about 780 hours a year.
Hours/year on $15/hr work
780hrs
Profit-equivalent of that time
$163,250
Talk about getting those hours back

Free 30-min call. I'll point at the 2-3 things that, removed from your week, would actually return that math to you.

How we got this: effective hourly rate = annual revenue ÷ 2,080 working hours/year × profit margin (you keep what's profit, not topline). Annual cost = effective rate × hours/week × 52. Rough by design — pricing strategy and labor structure shift the real number; the point is the magnitude.
What to do with this number

The math is the easy part. The hard part is which tasks come off your plate first.

Most owners can recover 8–12 hours a week without hiring anyone — just by changing who owns what, automating two specific things, and writing one decision rule. That's most of what week one of a fractional COO engagement actually does.

Read

What a fractional COO actually does in week one

A real day-by-day of the listening, the math, and the page-and-a-half on Friday. Why the "stop doing" list is usually the most valuable thing.

Read the post →

Read

The most expensive employee in your business is you

The full argument behind this calculator: why the owner doing $15/hr work is the most expensive employee in a $2M business — and where to start cutting.

Read the post →

Step one is the only commitment

If that number bothered you, let's talk.

Thirty minutes, free, no pitch. I'll tell you the two or three specific things that would shrink it the fastest — or honestly say I'm not the right fit.

Book a free call